The present invention relates to a circuit pattern inspecting instrument and a circuit pattern inspecting method, and in particular to an instrument and a method for inspecting circuit patterns on a wafer or the like in a semiconductor device manufacturing process.
For a comparison testing method of detecting defects in circuit patterns formed on a wafer in a semiconductor device manufacturing process, there has been put to practical use an instrument for inspecting the wafers by comparing images of two or more LSI circuits of the same pattern formed on a single wafer with each other.
Particularly, instruments for pattern comparison and pattern inspection using an electron beam are described in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. Sho 59-192943; P. Sandland et al., “An electron-beam inspection system for x-ray mask production”, Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, Vol. 9, No. 6, November/December 1991, PP. 3005–3009; D. Fleming et al., “Prospects for x-ray lithography”, Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, Vol. 10, No. 6, November/December 1992, pp. 2511–2515; D. Hendricks et al., “Characterization of a New Automated Electron-Beam Wafer Inspection System”, Integrated Circuit Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control IX, Feb. 20–22, 1995. Santa Clara, Calif, Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 2439, May 1995, pp. 174–183; and Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. Sho 5-258703. In those instruments, for obtaining a practical throughput, it is necessary to acquire images at a very high speed, and at least 100 times (at least 10nA) the electron beam current with an ordinary scanning electron microscope is used to ensure a sufficient S/N ratio of the images acquired at high speed as well as a practical inspection speed. The electron beam diameter is spread fairly wider than that in an ordinary scanning electron microscope and is about 0.05 to 0.2 μm. This is because of an increase in chromatic aberration caused by widening of the electron energy width which is attributable to a large beam current, a limitation to brightness of an electron gun and a limitation by the Coulomb effect.
The images formed by such an electron optic system are fed to an image processing unit, in which images of the adjacent circuits of the same pattern are compared with each other for inspection. If a portion having different brightness occurs between the compared images, the portion is regarded as a defect and coordinates of the portion are stored.
With the above configuration, it is possible to detect even a defect as small as 0.1 μm or so.
Further, instruments for inspecting defects in semiconductors by reducing the energy of the electron beam with a voltage applied to a sample and an electrode disposed close to the sample are disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Nos. Hei 7-78855, 9-181139, 10-19538, 10-27834, 10-27835, and 11-25901. But these references do not describe an instrument having a review function to be described later, or an instrument having a combination of the review function and an energy analyzing function to be described later.